This project takes on the role of a prayer to the earth, interrogating the permanence of the dimension of invisibility and spirituality of nature and thinks of the possibility of preserving, alongside characters of necessity, the spiritual aspects of human life that nature in a way unveils.
The project concerns the realisation of a Museum of Contemporary Art, situated in the National Park of the Foreste Casentinesi that extends about 50 km on the Appennini chain at a height that varies between 430m and 1650m above sea level. With it we responded, through art and archetypes of construction, to the wonder that reaches our eye of reality and the mystery of the force of nature, with an approach based on admiration and gratitude towards this immensity we call home.
The mountain, that way between Earth and Sky, due to its conformation, places us in a position of instability. Sloping, with grass below our feet, we are predisposed to reflection and to being in a state of attention. This earth is the ground to our project on which a series of rooms gather in 4 pairs along a small section of crest close to a peak and constitute the main body of the museum. There are two parts to every pair, and the square is the recurring shape of every couple. Its relation to the other shape evolves as they climb.
The incline on which the museum grows becomes the narrative structure in which the sequentiality defined by rooms, their distance and the effort required to reach one part after another, in movement, walking, strolling, marking one's own internal rhythm, become the subject of the project. A series of scenes and images that are gained by walking this ascent. The struggle is against one's own soul, responsible for giving direction to the body, for giving it the strength to confront that constant and almost imperceptible force that is Gravity. These big built bodies dialogue with the person who walks through them influencing their movements, their intuitions, their imagination and their memory.
In this project, the slightly solitary figure of the museum is flanked by that of a small house. Their presence, alongside that of the artist who for intermittent times brings visits living it, contribute to maintaining the vibrant soul that the museum potentially can hold, as a place that gathers heirlooms of a collective experience, a house for works of living artists.
So, the park in the mountain and in here also the container of living things, are all part of the idea of an unexpected finding, a mirage on the horizon between reality and dream.
